Breaking the Girl
by Redd
Summary: She couldn’t take it, not anymore, not again. Sam relearning to live her life. Continuum-verse.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: I don't own it, so please don't sue me. The title I borrowed from a song by the lovely Anna Nalick, and everyone else you should recgoize from MGM.

Cripes it's been a while since I've updated. And by a while I mean like, July '08. Oh my god, I should be shot.

Anyway, this is what actually prompted me to write my other piece, _Suddenly_. The original was deleted in a hiccup (I've since replaced that computer) and I finally feel comfortable enough with this piece, which wound up being much longer than I anticipated, to share it.

To those who didn't read _Suddenly_ (don't feel bad, it's all right, but if you like this, I hope you give that a read) the general idea was the 'other' Jack from Continuum dealing with our guys suddenly showing up. This is about Sam coming to terms with being in the Continuum Timeline and her thoughts about all that's happened. This is not strictly limited to the movie or SG-1 and will deal lightly with the events on Atlantis and even less so, mention some of the characters in Universe (which, I must say, I rather like, so don't shoot me for that either). The idea that all of these characters are all still intertwined really fascinates me, so after my longest author's note ever please enjoy!

Breaking the Girl

Dead.

Jack was dead. Her Jack was dead, at the very least.

She hadn't wanted to leave him there, not _there_, not one some planet light years from home, not on some Tok'ra planet. She figured he would have hated that last part the most. She hadn't wanted to leave that slowly disappearing planet and come to this god forsaken Earth. Cameron had dragged her through the Gate and a part of her, a large part, hated him for it. She'd have rather stayed there than loose Jack.

Heartbroken and beaten that she was though, Daniel had needed her. Had needed them to get help. Cameron had known what was happening inside her head and had been trying his best to make her focus, to make her see what was happening around them, but it had been Daniel that caught her attention.

And _he _had been there. Jack.

He had been pleased to see her, even if he had been confused, not that he wasn't usually confused. She just sort of expected it now. But he had been happy, and that was a good thing because he was always happy to see her and if he was happy then maybe they were home and it had all just been some kind of terrible nightmare.

But it hadn't been him.

Oh sure, Sam conceded, it had looked like her Jack, and it had sounded like her Jack but it hadn't been him in the end. He was Jack O'Neill, but he wasn't _her_ Jack. She was sure he was still Sara's Jack. She had been glad to hear that that Charlie was alive and well and safe but a part of her, that part of her that still hated Cameron for not letting her die there with him, was angry. Angry at Jack and Sara and Charlie even though she knew she had no right.

She didn't _know_ this man.

But he knew her. Or had known her. The other Samantha Carter.

That's what hurt the most.

He looked at her and saw an astronaut brought back from the dead. To him, she was just a woman he had known. To him she was just some woman that was long dead, a casket, that she thought, rather morbidly, didn't even have a body in it. To him, she was just paperwork. He had said so.

But to _her_…to her, he was everything and he had no idea at all.

She couldn't take it, not anymore, not again.

They took Daniel from her and Cameron and sent them off to different parts of the country, never to see one another again. It was even _her _Daniel and Cameron that they were taking away from her, not_ theirs_. Not that there was another Cameron Mitchell for her to confuse him with, a fact that had stung all of them. In the end, despite all of her cooperation, all of her work, all of her faith it had all boiled down to the same thing. No Jack. No Daniel. No astrophysics. No team; no any part of her old life. They hadn't even allowed her to keep her dog tags for comfort.

What did they expect her _do _with herself, anyway? She certainly had no idea.

So she bought herself a telescope and sat on her balcony every night with a bowl of Fruit Loops and stared up at the stars.

"_How many do you think we've been to?"_ She could hear Jack's voice as clear as day ringing in her ears. She could hear Daniel moving behind her, snorting into his hand, ready with a sarcastic comment. She could feel Teal'c raise an eyebrow at her at their continued banter. She would meet his eyes and they'd share a look of amusement before turning back to the fire.

It was just all so damned _real_.

She knew her neighbors thought she was crazy, they had to, and Sam was half-convinced herself. Maybe more than half. She could hear them, hear her team, chattering sometimes and it first it had been like being on the Prometheus again. She wondered if her neighbors could hear her talking though the walls. She had moved in without so much as a word to anyone and spent all of her time on her balcony with her telescope. A few of them had tried to approach her, to make conversation with her, to be her friend, but Sam knew that they didn't understand and she didn't have the strength left to make them. She kept to herself as much as possible because, really, she didn't want to deal with them.

For weeks this carried on until one day, a day she knew she should be getting ready for Daniel's birthday but couldn't do a damn thing about, she was checking her mail. This as not terribly unusual, even at the early morning hour, for she always got her mail as early as possible partially to avoid dealing with her neighbors and partially because she hadn't quite kicked her military training.

"Hello," greeted the old woman who appeared at her side as she shut her mailbox. Sam started and her hand automatically fell to her side in search of a weapon that would never be there again, "you're that girl that moved into 214, aren't you?"

"Yeah," she answered with a polite smile. She'd seen the older woman around sometimes, but not often enough that she'd have thought to have a conversation.

"It's good to finally see you out. My name is Catherine Hardings."

"Sam," she said back.

"Sam? Is that all?" Catherine asked with a sparkle in her deep brown eyes that reminded her of another Catherine she had cared deeply for and she had to go on.

"Samantha…O'Neill."

It had almost been the truth. A Half-truth. They had talked about getting married when he finally retired again. Maybe he would have come to live with her on Atlantis, had she not been relieved of command, or maybe she would have gone back to Area 51, or even back to the SGC as a full time scientist.

That hardly mattered now.

"Samantha O'Neill? That's a nice name. It suits you. Sam," Catherine said as if she were trying it out and Sam wished she'd just leave her alone, that for once the universe would stop poking at her with that stick while she was down, "I see you, you know, at night out on your balcony. You always seem so lost, so broken. Always distracted, like you're not really here with us. What is that you're looking for?"

"I...I don't know," she had been startled, taken aback by the question, and that was the truth. Probably the only time she'd spoken the truth since they dropped her off of that damned bus all those weeks ago, and even if she did know she sure as hell wasn't going to tell this strange woman that had snuck up on her, "Not anymore."

"A man may spend his whole life searching for something he will never find," she shook her head, "No, not you. That is not your fate, Samantha O'Neill. You know what it is you're looking for, and you have indeed found it, I believe. The problem is, are you willing to go out and get it?"

Before Sam could respond, the old woman had shuffled away and she wondered what the hell the universe was playing at.

In that moment she wanted to call out and tell her the truth. That she was looking for a way home, a way to go back to her lover, to her friends and her _life_. She wanted to tell her that she should be drinking her first cup of coffee of the day with Daniel in her lab, laughing with him because it was so easy just for her to _be_ around him and that later she'd be having tea after dinner with Teal'c and that they could talk about anything and everything because he'd been there for her when even Jack and Daniel hadn't been. She wanted to tell her about Jack and what an amazing man he was and that he was everything to her. She wanted to tell her that she'd banter with Cameron in her techno babble just to confuse him and that she was probably supposed to go shopping with Vala. She wanted to tell her about her team, about the brave men and women she'd known, about Janet, about her expedition and all of the amazing people she'd gotten to watch grow and begin to reach their full potentials right before her eyes.

She wanted to tell her that she didn't give a rat's ass about what Hank Landry said because _this wasn't her life_.

But she knew she couldn't because when all the cards were down, Samantha Carter always did what she thought to be right, regardless of how it might hurt her. She knew her reasons for resetting the timeline were purely selfish and that was fair to no one but herself.

Sometimes she wondered if it wasn't the other her that had gotten off lucky.

* * *

All right, a little bit darker and a little bit stranger than I usually take Sam, but *god* there was so much left open ended in that movie. All right, so, tell me what you think!


	2. Chapter 2

A/n: I don't own, please don't sue.

So I wanted to have this up earlier this week, but I've got some papers to work on, so editing came out a little bit slower than I'd like. This chapter is a little bit more abstract than the last one, more in Sam's Head (if that were possible), but strarting next chapter (Which I have started, I promise) we're going to see her interacting more with people and strart bridging the year gap.

* * *

She needed to get out of her apartment, that's all. It was natural for someone if their neighbor never left. She just needed some fresh air, just needed to walk around, she wasn't hiding from Catherine and the other three neighbors who had rung her doorbell earlier that morning. Maybe she'd go furniture shopping--she hadn't done that yet. In fact, her apartment had recently begun looking suspiciously like Jack's in DC. No more furniture than was absolutely necessary, empty pizza boxes, beer, Fruit Loops, and Jell-O.

Unsurprisingly, the furniture shop had quickly lost its appeal and she'd wound up in a local college bookstore. She'd long ago decided that if she had to stay on this Earth, and it had taken her a while to make that very resigned decision, then she should know what had or hadn't happened and therefore made rather irregular trips to the history section of the bookstore. She was always looking for something but she could never put her finger on what. Sometimes she'd just browse, sometimes she'd find books that she remembered Daniel having fits over because of the sheer amount of information that they'd gotten wrong. Sometimes she looked at books on restoring antique cars and motorcycles and thought of Cameron, wondered if he was working one, wondered if she should get her own. But the weather in Seattle was unpredictable and it had rained more often than not, so in the end she'd decided against it for now. She had made it through Babylon and Rome, and was finally now brave enough, desperate enough to look through Egypt. She'd been putting it off, but then for the life of her, she couldn't remember why. There, in white text was a name she never thought she'd see again outside her own handwriting. A name she knew as well as her own, a name that for almost eleven years had meant more to her than her own.

_Doctor Daniel Jackson_.

_The Truth About the Pyramids._ Sam smiled; it was nice to know that Daniel seemed to never change.

She bought the book without a second thought just so she could have a piece of him with her and was nearly done with it by the time night fell. She could hear him, could hear her Daniel in his animated voice explaining his findings just as she had listened to him do for years and could almost see him bouncing in excitement. It was a comfort to her soul. It was the first time all year that she'd even felt like she'd had one.

She debated sending him a copy, just in case he hadn't found it on his own yet, but she knew that she couldn't. Instead she looked up everything she could find about him. The other him. The not her Daniel. All of the papers he had ever written, transcripts for the lectures he had, just so she could hear him. She could see his face light up with every point he made, she could see it fade just as quickly, she could see the quirk of his smile, the frown lines on his face. It had become her obsession, reading them over and over and finally, it wasn't enough. She needed to hear him, to really hear him, but she couldn't talk to her Daniel.

But she could talk to _him_.

He reminded her so much of her Daniel, the Daniel he had been when she met him, almost. This Daniel didn't have her, didn't have Jack or Teal'c, or the Stargate Program, or Sha're and Abydos. She wondered if his parents were alive on this Earth, if Nicholas was still around. She wondered if he had anyone at all.

Finally, she couldn't take the wondering and the guessing anymore. Her Daniel had always hated his birthday, especially in the early years of the program. He confessed years and years later, only after Cassandra had gone off to college that they made him feel alone. She knew, somewhere in the part of her that was so entwined with him, that he was alone. It didn't have to be romantic, and it was so different from what she had shared with Jack that sometimes she forgot; sometimes she forgot that Daniel and Teal'c shared her heart as well, that they made up a part of her, the part that made her proud of who she was and everything that she had accomplished. She loved those three men so much it almost physically hurt each time she looked at them, each time she thought of them. Cameron was different, and she loved him dearly, now after she had finally learned to cope without her boys, but...he wasn't so ingrained in her very soul that it hurt to breathe without him. It wasn't like it was Daniel, with Teal'c, with Jack. Daniel was _here_, and he was hurting and even in the very early years of their friendship it always tore her up inside to know that he was hurting; to know that he was alone. They were both alone, on their birthday, with no one to tell them that they were loved by someone, anyone, in the whole damned planet.

And _that_ was unacceptable.

She might not be able to call her Daniel, but she could call _him_.

"Hello?" His voice came in groggy over the line and Sam cursed herself for not remembering the time difference; though that was hardly fair as she also had to remind herself to _breathe_. It physically hurt to hear his voice and know that he wasn't hers. Her chest ached and her eyes stung, and somehow she hadn't expected that. She should have. "Hello?"

"Is this," she swallowed and even though she knew the answer like she knew her own hand she needed to ask anyway, "is this Doctor Daniel Jackson?"

"Yes," was the weary response.

Sam sighed, "Hi, Daniel."

"Hello," he sounded bemused and Sam wished she could just hear that sound forever, just Daniel being happy and alive and _there_, "Do I know you?"

"No," she said after a moment of silence. She'd be damned if she didn't admit that her heart broke all over again right then and there. But she was all ready damned. She tried her best to clear her throat and keep her voice from cracking as she continued, "No, you don't know me. But I know you, or, at least, I feel like I do."

"Right." She could almost see him fold his arms protectively over his chest and push up his glasses. It had never been this hard before--even as strangers they somehow gotten each other, had understood almost instinctually what took other their whole lives. Maybe this hadn't been one of her better ideas. "If you don't mind, miss, it's quite late--"

"I read your book," she blurted.

"You read my book?" he asked and all at once she was thrown back another time, another planet, when he had whispered to her about Jack, and she knew he hardly believed her. "Is that why you called me? To ridicule me? Well, I'm sorry lady but I really don't feel like listening to that again today so if you'll excuse me-"

"Not, it's not like that Daniel!" she broke in hastily, "I would never ridicule you, _never_, especially not on your birthday."

"How did you know it was my birthday?"

"I just…did." _Crap._

"How?"

"I doesn't matter, Daniel, listen to me," it felt so nice just to be able to say his name out loud again and she wished she could tell him hers so she could hear him say it, "I just wanted you to know that…I believe you, I believe your theories and most importantly, I believe _in_ you. I wanted you to know that Daniel, because you're so brilliant and ahead of your time and I know that this has been hard on you, but I wanted you to know that despite all of that academic bull-headedness, that someone believes in you."

"T-thank you," he sounded surprised and pleased, even to Sam. She wondered who had called to make him so defensive, so hurt, who it was that had backed him into that corner, but mostly, she hated them. She hated them for making such a brilliant and compassionate man doubt himself and his beliefs. "I don't suppose you're going to tell me who you are?"

"I can't, and I wish I could, more than anything."

"Really?"

"Yes, but I can't stay so…Happy Birthday, Daniel."

"Thank you again, whoever you are."

"Bye," she smiled sadly, knowing he couldn't see her, and hung up. For a moment she stared at the silent phone before she whispered, "I miss you."

And she cried. She cried for this Daniel Jackson and her own Daniel living somewhere on this Earth alone as she was. She cried for her Jack and for this Jack. She cried for Cameron and Teal'c and Vala. She cried for Janet never having found Cassie. She cried for Mark and her niece and her nephew and her father should he have lived to see her counterpart's death.

She cried for Jennifer Hailey and her wasted potential.

She cried for John and Rodney and Elizabeth and Jennifer. She had loved each of them too, in different ways, respected and admired each of them for all of their own special gifts, for just being who they were. She cried for Ronon and Teyla and her son. She wondered if they were safe, if they were happy, if they were even alive. She wondered what had become of them. She cried because she knew that she couldn't see them, either. Her team.

She cried for everyone she had ever lost at the SGC and Atlantis.

But she hadn't lost them, she realized, not here. Here on this Earth--this stupid, God forsaken hellhole of a planet--they hadn't died on some nameless world that their families would never know about. Here, Simon Wells got to see the birth of his daughter. What had they named her? Was he even married? Sam sighed and rubbed her eyes. She'd never know anyway.

Here they had lost _her_. The other her. The her that would never know what an amazing friend Janet could be, the her that would never get to see Jennifer Keller become the truly gifted and talented woman Sam knew she would be, as soon as she found herself. Would it be more difficult for her without the SGC? Without Atlantis? Would she ever be able to find herself without the settling presence that the city had seemed to give her, the friends that Sam knew would soon be her everything? That selfish part of her, that part that was still a little bit annoyed at Cameron, hated the IOA for taking her away.

She and Jennifer had been on the same page on Atlantis; both new, both frightened, though, admittedly, Sam was much better at hiding it. She had known Jennifer, briefly, had seen her around the SGC several years before. Janet had sung her praises every chance she'd gotten, saying that Jennifer would have her job as soon as she learned to trust herself. She reminded Sam so much of herself it was almost enough to make her cry sometimes. She had been like that at the very beginning of SG1, had been so afraid and determined to prove herself. She had been the only member of the team that Jack hadn't picked. When she had seen Jennifer, so afraid so unsure of herself and those around her, she had brushed it off--Janet would never put the girl in over her head and she really just needed the space to learn. When she'd found out that Jennifer was the CMO of Atlantis she'd been stunned, but not at all surprised. Atlantis would change Jennifer the way SG-1 had changed Sam; and selfishly, Sam had wanted to be there to see it happen, to support her and guide and protect her when she could.

And What about Jennifer Hailey? What would happen to her? And to Satterfield and Grogan? What about Elliot? Would he still have died? What about the new recruits that Daniel had told her about, Lieutenants Scott and James? And the new medic? Johansen. Carolyn said she was doing well, though the awe of the program hadn't worn off yet. She had even said that she was thinking of sending her to the new base to get her some off-world experience. What about the new scientists that Walter had mentioned arriving--she had been looking forward to meeting Doctor Volker, despite Rodney's complaints, his work was brilliantly competent and Lisa Park had seemed nice when they'd met. The other her would never know them, any of them. She wasn't sure if it hurt more to know that or that all of those people would never get to experience all of the wonderful things that the Stargate Program could offer them; probably even more than she could imagine.

She'd never get to understand John Sheppard's strange sense of humor, or know that they made for surprisingly good friends; and he'd never know the deep friendships and loyalty that he'd have received from Cameron--it had never surprised her that they were really the best of friends--or the support gained from Teyla, the understanding and compassion he'd gotten from Elizabeth. Sam had often wondered what those two women had meant to John and she'd come close to asking exactly twice, but could never bring herself to.

She hoped that Elizabeth was well; she still saw her on the news sometimes, making treaties and working with the UN. For their rocky start, Sam had a tremendous amount of respect for the woman and thought that, maybe, given the opportunity, the two of them could have been great friends. She wanted Elizabeth to know that she'd taken care of her city--because Sam knew no matter who was in charge or for how long, Elizabeth would always be the very heart of Atlantis.

Looking down at the phone, still cradled in her hands, she realized that if something happened to anyone, she'd never know, they'd never tell her. Even if they did, she knew she couldn't take it.

* * *

This turned out a little differently than I origianly intented, but I like this much better. Trying to piece together what was going on when was a lot of fun. Not toally sure when Icarus was actually built, but I think that they should have been around when Sam got back from Atlantis. She'd know of them, at least. But I have plans for that, so stay tuned and tell me what you think.


End file.
